Partners for Rural Washington names new executive director

A couple of years ago, Jody Opheim moved to Garfield, Washington, and saw the struggles that many rural communities were facing.

Having years of experience in fundraising, Opheim thought she could help and not long after, found Partners for Rural Washington – a nonprofit organization that works with rural communities to build leadership and resources primarily in Washington. It’s where she said she landed what she calls her “dream job.”

“I was having so much fun and feeling like I was making such a difference at work almost every day,” Opheim said.

Evidently passionate about her work, PRWA appointed Opheim last week as its new executive director. She most recently served as the organization’s southeast region director, assisting in projects that include water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure, as well as digital equity programs and health care facilities.

Through her new role she hopes to continue to lead and bring empowerment to rural communities that often struggle to get funding, she said.

“We have found some basic, common, huge struggles that most small, rural communities share, and one of those is they don’t have enough staff,” Opheim said. “It’s often a part-time clerk, a part-time mayor working in the office, and they just don’t have time to go after grant funding to look at all the different funding options and see what might work best so we are working definitely to help with the first issue of capacity.”

Staci Nelson, Partners for Rural Washington’s northeast region director, said the organization hopes to increase collaboration across the state to expand and serve more communities.

“With her at the helm and starting to increase collaboration and partnerships statewide, we’re really going to be able to get to central Washington, all the way over to the coast and Puget Sound, and help a lot of those smaller communities as well,” Nelson said.

Opheim already has stepped into her role, and in the next couple of weeks will be headed to the Northwest Rural Investment Summit to continue expanding resources for rural communities.

“I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up,” she said. “It’s just been an honor and a pleasure and I’m so very excited to see what we do in the next few years.”